


The Only One I Trust

by Altaire



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Berlin (City), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-23 01:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7461630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altaire/pseuds/Altaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Steve trusts Natasha more than anyone. Even himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only One I Trust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nats_North_by_North](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nats_North_by_North/gifts).



> Drabble Challenge — Prompt: "You're the only one I trust to do this."

“You’re not going.”

He’s not looking at her, but Steve has long since past the point where he would ever need to. His fingers, forever caught between the soldier and the boy he once was, know her better than he could ever know himself. He doesn’t have to look to see Natasha stiffen beside him, he’s already drawing it in his mind’s eye. 

And who can blame her? This is after all, a mission that was birthed through her intel and built by her delicate fingers. Steve is a warrior, and the battlefield is his element. Over the years he’s come to appreciate her more subtle methods. She’s going to need those where she’s going. But Steve just can’t quite seem to find the words. 

“And why wouldn’t I be?”

She doesn’t sound mad, but then, she rarely ever does. Just mild interest. The truth never lay in her words. Steve always found it in other places; her eyes, her lips, her jaw. He’s spent years breaking off her mask, as patient and unyielding as stone, until inch by inch she lets him in. 

He doesn’t answer right away, picking and choosing the words in his mind, phrases just making it to his lips, only to be abandoned before they reach open air. Blue eyes scan the skyline, searching for the courage he needs to put this weight on her shoulders. They’re in Germany again, and in a way that helps him. Never in his life would Steve have imagined how much this country would shape him. He’d first come here to fight a war. He’d come back again on the first day he’d met Natasha, and it was on another mission here that he’d fallen in love with her. Only a few miles away from this rooftop was the airport where the Avengers had broken in two. 

Perhaps it’s fitting that he’s doing this now, here in this country, Steve leaning over the railing, staring at the distant city, and Natasha with her back to it, arms crossed and head tilted, staring at him just as deliberately as he’s trying not to stare at her. They’ve changed a lot since their first time here together, back when she still wore a SHIELD badge and he dressed like it was the 40s. Now they’re fugitives, nomads when they were once heroes. She’s blonde and he’s brunet and he’ll never admit how much it drives him mad, wanting to run his fingers through those crimson tresses, that fire which belongs to her and her alone. 

He can picture the shade perfectly. He’s spent almost four years trying to put it on paper, but can never quite seem to get it right. 

And that’s all the distraction he needs, getting him away from the effort to find the right wording and letting his heart speak, rather than the mind. Besides, its guilt that holds him back more than words ever could. He needs her now more than ever, but that doesn’t mean he wants to give her this burden. 

“Because you were right Nat.” As he speaks, Steve’s hand moves without thinking, reaching into his pocket a compass that was no longer there. He doesn’t carry it anymore, hasn’t done so for a while now. Because his heart no longer rests within the cold metal, it’s warm and alive in the woman beside him. It was different with Natasha, different than it had been before. With Peggy he’d known in an instant, falling head over heels in the moment he laid eyes on her, and with her by his side he’d always found true north. When he’d met Natasha he never would have guessed, never could have imagined, too busy chasing a ghost that was a lifetime away. But that only made the outcome all the more powerful, because when he realized he was in love with her she was already his friend, already his partner, already the person he trusted most to have his back. Natasha wasn’t a compass, she didn’t point north. She was magnetic, and a compass would simply point to her. 

“Maybe the accords were wrong, and maybe they weren’t. You were right, because it doesn’t matter. What mattered was that we stayed together, and I ruined that. You got the intel from the lab, you know what it says. Whatever happened in Rome, an infinity stone caused it. We can’t fight among ourselves anymore, not with what’s coming. So while I take the others to Rome, you’re going to New York. Talk to Stark. Tell him what we know, negotiate with him, whatever you think is best. Put me in prison if it gets the rest of you off. I broke the Avengers, but the world needs them united again.”

“Talk sense into Stark and get him to reform the Avengers. If it were that simple, we would have done that two years ago.”

He answers in action rather than words, instantly pushing off the rail and turning to her, one hand snaking around her neck to pull her into him, lips meeting and melding together perfectly, like they’ve done so many times before. Steve closes his eyes as he kisses her, imaging that the hair running through his fingers is made of fire instead of wheat, that he can have her forever and isn’t sending her off to negotiate his prison sentence, and that they could someday live in a world where their love doesn’t have to come second to what they’d vowed to protect. 

But they live in the real world, and the dream ends the moment he pulls away.

“It’s not simple, that’s why I’m sending you. I can’t fix it. Tony can’t fix it. But you can. You reform them. You lead them. You’re the only one I trust to do it right.”


End file.
